Yemeni jets pounded the home of a suspected Al-Qaeda leader on Wednesday, a military source said, as a top US official acknowledged that Sanaa has made a "decisive turn" against the extremists.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, announced in London the suspension of direct flights from Yemen until further security measures are agreed, in the wake of the Christmas Day US airliner bombing scare.

A Yemeni tribal source confirmed the air strikes on Erq Al-Shabwan village in Maarib province east of Sanaa, and said a number of people had been killed. Local forces responded with anti-aircraft fire.

The wave of air strikes, which began in the morning, blasted the house of Ayed al-Shabwani, one of six suspected Al-Qaeda leaders the government said were killed in an air strike last week, the tribal source said.

The military official, who would not be named, said there had been three strikes on the house and one on a nearby orange grove where the authorities think Shabwani created a safe haven for dozens of Al-Qaeda members.

In the afternoon, witnesses said, jets twice fired missiles into the grove and afterwards continued to overfly the area.

The strikes come just days after Yemen said it killed six suspected leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including Shabwani, in Saada province north of Sanaa.

AQAP denied anyone was killed in the attack on three 4X4 vehicles in a remote desert area, saying instead that some militants were wounded.

No one commented on whether the government now believed Shabwani had in fact survived that raid.

Increased US pressure

Yemen has come under increased US pressure to clamp down on AQAP since it claimed responsibility for the December 25 bid to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam as it prepared to land in Detroit.

Sanaa points to air strikes in December in remote mountainous areas of Shabwa province, east of the capital, which it says killed more than 60 suspected AQAP operatives, as well as last week's strikes in Saada and a number of recent arrests as proof it is winning the war against the extremists.

Jeffrey Feltman, assistant US secretary of state for near-eastern affairs, acknowledged these efforts on Wednesday.

"In terms of the government of Yemen's determination and willingness to confront a threat of Al-Qaeda militants in the country, we should be and we are encouraged by recent steps the government has taken," Feltman told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington.

But he insisted the US was not "naive" about the Sanaa government as an ally.

He cited violent unrest in the country's north and south, an "inconsistent" ability to deliver services to much of its people, and said Sanaa's record on human rights, good governance and anti-corruption had been "wanting."

The US State Department's top counter-terrorism official, Daniel Benjamin, told the committee said some Yemeni institutions had proved "effective incubators of radicalisation."

But Benjamin praised "a decisive turn by the Yemeni government and a decisive interest by the international community" to help it battle extremism.

Three dozen US citizens

The comments came a day after the Senate committee released a report warning that AQAP may also be training as many as three dozen US citizens who converted to Islam in prison.

The Americans went to Yemen on their release, ostensibly to study Arabic, but "possibly for Al-Qaeda training," the report said.

US officials are also worried about 10 non-Yemeni Americans -- "blonde-haired, blue-eyed types" -- who travelled to Yemen, converted to Islam, became fundamentalists, married Yemeni women and fit the profile of Americans that Al-Qaeda has sought to recruit.

Also in Washington, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kurbi met US national security adviser James Jones, who reiterated US support for Sanaa's "determined efforts to combat the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaeda," National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said.

Shabwa provincial governor Ali Hassan al-Ahmadi has said dozens of Al-Qaeda fighters are holed up in mountain redoubts in the province.

Among them, he said, are AQAP chief Nasir al-Wahishi, his number two Said al-Shihri and radical US-Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Britain's Brown, meanwhile, said in a statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday that in the wake of the failed Christmas Day attack no more direct flights from Yemen would be allowed to land in Britain.

"We have agreed with Yemenia airlines -- pending enhanced security -- that they suspend their direct flights to the UK from Yemen with immediate effect," he said.

-AFP